TEASER
Phillip Padgett sits in a room at his desk typing. His room is bare except for the desk and chair. Padgett starts to pace and walks over to a mirror. He sticks his hand in his shirt like he’s digging for something. His chest starts bleeding all over his hand. When Padgett pulls his hand out, he’s holding his own beating heart in his hands.
ACT ONE
Padgett walks down to the incinerator with a bag. As he looks into the fire at a beating heart, he throws the bag in.
Scully gets on an elevator heading to Mulder’s apartment. Padgett follows her inside. The camera zooms in on first Scully’s mouth as she breathes, and then her eyes. Padgett obviously likes what he sees.
Scully gets off of the elevator, as does Padgett. When Scully reaches Mulder’s door and knocks, Padgett is still staring at her as he opens his own apartment door, which is next to Mulder’s.
Mulder finally lets Scully in. He’s brushing his teeth. Scully asks him about his neighbor. All he knows is that he’s a writer. She then drops the subject and shows Mulder photos of her autopsy report from the second victim.
Padgett steps up to a vent to listen to Mulder and Scully’s conversation.
Scully tells Mulder that she doesn’t know how they died. There were no incisions, no scope marks. There were no prints or DNA material.
Mulder thinks that it’s psychic surgery.
SCULLY: Mulder, psychic surgery is some man dipping his hand in a bucket of chicken guts and pretending to, to remove tumors from the sick and gullible.
Mulder tells Scully that it was the perfect murder because there is no evidence. She tells him that even if the killer did commit a perfect murder without any mistakes, that there still is motive. When they find that, they find the killer.
Padgett lies on his bed smoking.
A boy and girl are sitting in a car talking. The boy says that he told her he loved her, and proceeds to kiss her. She yells at him, telling him he does "that thing," and he says that’s the way he kisses. She gets out of the car.
The boy goes chasing after his girlfriend when he sees a hooded man. The man attacks him and rips out the boy’s heart, as he screams.
The scene switches to Padgett who is typing. The end of the last line says "…beating heart."
FBI HEADQUARTERS
7:07 AM
At the office, Scully walks in, stepping on a letter on the floor that she didn’t notice. Scully is talking to Mulder on the phone while he is at a crime scene. He tells her that there is a third victim, out on lover’s lane.
MULDER: I’m sure man a person’s had their heart broken out here, but not quite like this.
Mulder wants her to come out to the scene and explain medically what happened. She doesn’t know if she can do that. She tells him that they are looking for a pattern.
She notices the unmarked envelope on the floor that was slipped under the door. Telling Mulder about it, she opens it and finds in it a pendant, like a charm.
(Note, that Scully is listening to Mulder through this whole scene. It looks like she is aroused talking to him! [OK so I’m a Shipper. So what?!]) During this, in a voice over, Padgett is telling what Scully is thinking. He asks (as if she were thinking it) if it was from the killer. Was there was a symbolic message in it? Was it from a religious fanatic who licked the envelope, leaving DNA as evidence? She had a certainty that the killer was male. As she held the charm, she imagined him doing the same, trying to picture his face.
The scene flips to show Padgett typing. It continues to do that throughout the voice over.
[He] says that he would have a plain, average face, that would look trustworthy, and that she was naturally trusting herself. The image she conjured up was useless. It was not her strength as an investigator, she was a martial in cold facts. That only led to sexist criticism, but:
PADGETT: She was soft, malleable. Not up to her male counterparts. Even now as she pushed an errant strand of titian hair behind her ear (Scully does this), she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman (Scully runs her fingers down her cheek) was bridelike, unthinkable (a slight smile crosses Scully’s face). But she was beautiful, fatally. Stunningly possessive. Yet the compensatory respect she demanded only deepened the yearning of her heart. To let it open. To let someone in.
Scully looks at the charm as the screen fades. What a way this guy has with words.
ACT TWO
Mulder comes into the office and they talk about the charm. Scully tells him that it’s a Milagro, which is Spanish for "miracle." On the charm is a picture of a burning heart (real, not like a Valentine’s one). Scully thinks it was sent to Mulder from the killer, but he doesn’t think it has any link. He thinks that maybe it was sent to her, maybe even from a secret admirer.
Mulder tells Scully that she needs to go do an autopsy right away. She sarcastically tells him:
SCULLY: Thank you for making my schedule, but I think I’m gonna have to be late for that appointment.
Scully goes to a church and inside looks at a painting, "My Divine Heart." Padgett comes up to Scully and starts telling her about the origins of the painting. He tells her that he knew she was coming there because of various things he "noticed" about her. She asks why he’s been following her, and he says that he hasn’t, that he just imagined that she would come. He tells her that that’s what he does – he’s a writer. He imagines how people behave. He admits that he’s been watching her, he noticed her. He tells her he knows why she came, and that being a government employee, she has privileges to park wherever she wants. As kind of a complement, Padgett tells her that she is fit with muscular calves, so she must run with a group that’s near there. He basically tells her everything about her life, and she is frightened. He tells her that he sent the pendant, that he has a secret attraction to her. He says that he’s sorry he’s made her uncomfortable, but that he’s taken by her. He tells her that that doesn’t usually happen to him, that they’re alike that way. Scully’s eyes are a little bit teary as she walks away.
At the morgue, Mulder quips:
MULDER: Hey, you weren’t jokin’ about being late. I was about to start slicing and dicing myself.
Scully apologizes to Mulder, saying that he was right about the charm. Of course, Mulder disputes this, saying it was from the killer. She tells him of her secret admirer that lives next door to him. He asks if he’s the killer and she says that he isn’t and that he was:
SCULLY: Frightening as in too much information and intimate detail. What kills you is his audacity.
He asks her if she knows his name and she tells him that she doesn’t, but that it shouldn’t be too hard to figure it out. Mulder is jealous.
Mulder steals Padgett’s mail to find out his name, etc. Padgett sees him and follows him into the elevator. Mulder tries to get some information on him, but doesn’t get much. They size each other up. !JealousMulder!
In voice over, Padgett says that "the overture in the church had urged the beautiful agent’s partner into an act of hagailian self-justification" and proceeded to steal his mail.
Mulder looks through the vent at Padgett (of course he cannot hear any of the following).
PADGETT: But if she’d predictably aroused her sly partner’s suspicions (you know he isn’t talking about suspicions!), Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become simply aroused.
Scully is shown at the morgue, taking off her bloody apron, etc.
PADGETT: All morning the stranger’s unsolicited complements had played on the dampened strings of her instrument, until the middle "C" of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself. Quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners, the investigators, and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.
Scully takes the charm out of her pocket and looks at it. She turns around as if afraid someone is watching her.
PADGETT: She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence.
The scene changes to show Padgett’s room and bed.
PADGETT: That the images came perforce and she let them play. Let them flood in like savory, or more a sugary confection from her adolescence.
Scully and Padgett (in his mind I’m sure, not hers) are making out on his bed. Scully is running her hands through his hair as the voice over continues.
PADGETT: When her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. Ache. Pain. Prick. Twinge.
Padgett rubs his hand up Scully’s leg, under her skirt a little, and up her thigh.
PADGET: How ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire.
Padgett’s continues over her rear and up to her chest as he starts to open her blouse.
PADGETT: The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself.
Padgett finishes opening Scully’s blouse to reveal her black lace bra.
PADGETT: She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal.
Scully looks up at Padgett breathless as he leans over her.
PADGETT: Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there or only helped her discover a landscape she by necessity blinded herself to.
Padgett leans over Scully and they start to kiss.
PADGETT: What would her partner think of her?
Mulder is in his apartment listening to Padgett type as he opens the letter he took. It’s a phone bill. Padgett hadn’t called anyone in quite awhile.
MULDER: Mr. Popularity.
Mulder starts looking at all the newspapers he got.
On the way over to Mulder’s, Scully turns and goes to Padgett’s. On his typewriter it says "…the compulsion was overwhelming…" She tries to give him the heart charm back, but he won’t take it. She tells him that she wants to return it, because she can’t return the gesture.
Padgett tells Scully that he is lonely like her and asks her in for coffee. She tells him that loneliness is a choice.
Against her judgment, Scully stays. He asks her to sit awhile, and she says there is no place to sit. Obviously this is a reason for Padgett to get her to sit on his bed.
Padgett tells her that he’s been writing about her, and basically that she’s his inspiration. He admits that he moved in next to Mulder because he couldn’t move in next to her, because there was no room. He says that she’s not home that often anyway. Scully asks him that if he knows so much about her, why isn’t she leaving. He tells her that motives are hard to figure out. He also says that he knows she’s safe because she’s carrying her gun. He tells her about him writing about her. They just sit there as the light goes out, and Padgett says, "Imagine that."
Suddenly, Mulder comes crashing through the door with his gun, asking Scully if she is all right. Of course she is and wants to know why he’s there.
Mulder slams Padgett against the wall saying that he’s been writing about the murders. He shows Scully part of the story that says "…felt his warm beating heart."
ACT THREE
In jail, Padgett tells Mulder and Scully that he’s just writing about the murders. He imagines them. Of course Mulder thinks differently. When Padgett makes a smart comment to Mulder, he goes towards him, but Scully grabs his arm. Padgett can see the silent communication between them as they look at each other.
Mulder tells Scully that he’s going to try to find his accomplice that was in the story. She tells him that she already did that, and that he’s been dead for two years. Mulder says that he couldn’t have done it alone; Scully tells him that maybe he didn’t do it at all. He tells her that he can predict or imagine what someone will do, but Scully tells him that that’s what he does as a profiler. Mulder says that he writes it before it happens, that it’s pretty clear with what he wrote about her. Mulder asks Scully if she knows that she’s in his story. She tells him that she knows, and that she read about a chapter. She asks what it said. Mulder replies:
MULDER: Well, let’s just say it ends with you doing the naked pretzel with the "stranger" on the bed in an unfurnished fourth floor apartment.
Mulder tells her he’s assuming that that didn't happen either. She tells him of course not, that he knows her better than that. He tells her that she might want to finish the book. Mulder looks really sad.
Scully receives a letter from Padgett about love and grief. During this the screen shows the girl from before at her boyfriend’s grave. Part of the statement says, "Love, unlike matter or energy, was an endless fly in the universe. A germ with grows from nothingness, that cannot be eradicated, even from the darkest of hearts." The letter though turns different, saying that love can turn to hate. The killer is shown ripping the girl’s heart out. Scully realizes what he means.
At the scene, Mulder tells Scully that the girl is a no-show. There could have been a struggle at the grave, but because of the funeral, they can’t really tell. He thinks it’s just a jerk-off, but Scully thinks that maybe he is just trying to prove he didn’t do anything.
Mulder thinks he sees Padgett, but it’s just a worker that was delivering flowers. Mulder goes to investigate his load, though, and under the flowers is the girl’s body.
Mulder releases Padgett because he thinks it’s the only way he can catch him. Mulder tells Padgett that he’s sorry, he made a mistake. On the way out, Padgett tells Scully (in front of Mulder!):
PADGETT: I made a mistake myself.
MULDER: What’s that, Mr. Padgett?
PADGETT: In my book I’d written that Agent Scully falls in love, but that’s obviously impossible…Agent Scully is already in love.
Padgett looks really sad. (He kind of nods in Mulder’s direction as he says it?) Mulder looks surprised/confused. Scully looks kind of like maybe she agrees with him and just realized it.
Padgett is writing when his main character from the story comes into his room (this is all in his mind.) He asks the character how he should end it, but he only tells him that it’s his story. When the man asks Padgett why he did it, he says that it was for love, that he wanted to love her. The character eventually leads Padgett to know that the only way he can end the story is to have Scully killed.
The character from the story comes into Mulder’s apartment. Mulder has left Scully there to go find Padgett. The man pushes Scully to the ground and starts ripping her heart out. She screams as blood spurts out.
Padgett is down at the incinerator, ready to burn his story because he doesn’t want to kill Scully. Mulder asks what he wrote and Padgett tells him, and proceeds to get ready to burn the story. Mulder tells him that he’s destroying evidence and won’t let him destroy the story.
Mulder hears Scully scream and rushes to save her.
Padgett burns the book.
Mulder gets to Scully who is lying on the floor motionless and bleeding. When he gets close to her, she jerks like she thinks it’s the killer. She realizes it’s Mulder and she hugs him tight, crying hard. Mulder just holds her as she lets the tears fall.
Back at the incinerator, the camera pans to show the pages of the story burning. In voice over, Padgett says that the story had to be destroyed. He says that he wanted to write it, even if no one could read it. He says that there was only one possible end.
The camera pans to show Padgett lying on the floor motionless. Again in voice over he says that he wanted to give the one thing that he couldn’t have in return. The camera pans to his own motionless heart, on the floor beside him.
(be sure to check out the images, quotes, reviews, ect. of older episodes, through the main pages.)
